Entertainment Blogs

An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue.

REVIEW: Charles Dwyer at Caggio

Milwaukee artist Charles Dwyer has established himself prominently as a fixture of figurative art. His work has been exhibited for years, nationally and overseas. He is best known for remarkably pretty mixed media works depicting young ingénues in softly titillating poses, flesh mottling into backgrounds of abstraction or patterns.

His artwork has now returned home, however. At the nascent Caggio gallery on Brady St., owners Joseph Ledger and Kaitlin Rathkamp are currently exhibiting paintings that are a stunning departure for Dwyer. The show is called “Ash Paintings,” on view until Dec. 30. It marks a career-changing shift for Dwyer.

Nothing terribly pretty or realistic here. Instead,” brut rawness” meets us in the form of visceral abstraction. Thick coats of ash cover the large paintings, alluding to primal notions of mortality and the afterlife. Muscular brushstrokes work over the surfaces and gob up into the semblance of, well, the human head. But these heads are the reflections of abstract expressionism, not realist portraiture. The subconscious bubbles to the surface, a glaring eye here, a lightning bolt of pink denoting an eviscerated ear there. With Dwyer’s formal skill they become a powerful statement about the human condition.

The change in Dwyer’s artistic goals is surprising, but not unprecedented. Often artists with the finest skills have to move beyond “getting it right.” Philip Guston is a textbook case, and pertinent here as a clear influence in Dwyer’s new work. Dwyer remarks that figurative art was “not my thing,” that his previous works were mostly done in the service of “making a living.” His paintings of young women are formally gorgeous and would make most realist strivers jealous, but in the end they are somewhat decorative and approachable. Too polite to sustain Dwyer, it appears. He needed a change. The ash paintings to me are the bold response of a mid-career artist facing his demons and taking them on headlong.

The struggle between selling art and making it is also a notable facet of this exhibit. Dwyer now finds his earlier work “easy” and “arrogant.” He has admitted that his agent has yet to see the new paintings and that many of the galleries that currently exhibit and sell his work will not be interested in this new project. But he was compelled to make them nonetheless.

In the end, the work is new and, at times, yet to be fully investigated. Some of Dwyer’s pretty painting tricks remain. But the work is honest and real. Perhaps even heroic.

Rafael Francisco Salas is a painter, the chair of the art department at Ripon College and a regular Art City contributor.

Images from top: Rafael Francisco Salas; "Ash Me and a Ghost" by Charles Dwyer, courtesy the artist and Caggio.

About Mary Louise Schumacher

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. She writes about culture, design, the urban landscape and Milwaukee's creative community. Art City is her award-winning cultural page and a community of more than 20 contributing writers and artists.

E-mail Newsletter

Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.